South Australia too arid for more dams, say Liberals

SOUTH Australia is too dry and has no good spots for new dams so a Liberal taskforce considers there is &quot;little prospect&quot; of building any here.

Political Editor Tory Shepherd

The AdvertiserFebruary 14, 201310:21pm

SOUTH Australia is too dry and has no good spots for new dams so a Liberal taskforce considers there is &quot;little prospect&quot; of building any here.

The Advertiser

revealed yesterday that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott is considering a $30 billion plan to build up to 100 dams across Australia, mainly in the north.

The plan mentions the Middle River dam on Kangaroo Island, but goes on to say that there was "little prospect for construction of significant new dams in SA".

"While SA has more than 30 existing dams of note, all are small to modest in scale which is indicative of the state's general lack of suitable major dam sites and largely arid nature," the report says.

The leaked report also mentions in passing the historical idea of building a dam on the Murray at Chowilla near the border with Victoria.

In the 1960s SA Liberal premier Tom Playford announced plans for an enormous dam upstream from Renmark, but that was eventually shelved.

The Coalition's Dams and Water Management Task Group Discussion Paper declares SA "with its limited options for new dams and dry climate" a "stormwater harvesting pioneer".

Mr Abbott said yesterday the report was a "good paper (but) not a finalised paper".

"In the end, there is a process that would have to be gone through ... but what we want to avoid is the dam phobia which has afflicted our country for at least a generation," he said.

"We currently use about six per cent of our available water resources. Nine per cent is the international average.